1. Field
The present invention relates to a communication service. In particular, the present invention relates to a method for providing notification of a change of a phone number or a phone mail address.
2. Description of the Related Art
The notification of a change of a phone number is required to be provided to acquaintances of a cell phone user when the user changes his or her cell phone number. Instead of users notifying their acquaintances of new phone numbers, phone number change notification services have been provided by telephone service companies since the age of fixed telephones, where phone number change notification systems provide new phone numbers to all incoming calls to previous phone numbers. Also, such measures are considered that a phone number change notification system does not provide a new phone number to incoming calls from specific caller numbers or that a phone number change notification system provides a new phone number to incoming calls from specific caller numbers. These are efforts to limit targets to be notified of a phone number as personal information for the purposes of privacy protection, antistalking, prank call prevention, and the like.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2005-328313 discusses a technology for causing a phone number change notification system to provide a new phone number to incoming calls from specific caller numbers.
In order for the system of the cell phone service company to provide the new phone number to incoming calls from the specific caller numbers, the phone number changer (the person who changes his or her phone number) is required to previously register the phone numbers of targets to be notified of the new phone number. For this reason, the phone number changer uses the address book function of his or her cell phone, that is, the phone number changer selects the phone numbers of targets to be notified of the new phone number from among phone numbers included in the address book, and then registers the selected phone numbers in the system of the cell phone service company.
However, if a lot of phone numbers are included in the address book, it is troublesome work for the phone number changer to determine, for each of the phone numbers, adequacy of notification of the new phone number so as to register adequate phone numbers. Also, if the phone number changer repurchases a cell phone due to the loss of his or her cell phone and thus changes the previous phone number, the phone number changer cannot use the address book function of the previous cell phone since he or she no longer has the previous cell phone at hand. Therefore, it is difficult for the phone number changer to specify the phone numbers of targets to be notified of his or her new phone number. This also applies to cases where a phone mail address is changed.